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Monday, October 21, 2002 |
And more on RSS and bandwidth issues
Push by any other name. A hot topic at the moment is the bandwidth usage by news aggregators.
According to my own site statistics, aggregator hits on my various RSS feeds now outweigh browser hits on my HTML pages by a factor of 2 to 1. My bandwidth usage tops 250MB/day on a slow day. My free bandwidth limit is 3GB/month. You do the math. (581 words) [dive into mark]
Haven't I been whining about the bandwidth issues with Mac Net Journal for a couple of months? I am happy to see that some others are starting to do the math...
10:29:30 PM 
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Reducing the bandwidth of RSS news readers
RSS Aggregator Bandwidth Use. I’ve been working on reducing NetNewsWire’s bandwidth consumption—including ETag support. I hope to have a beta out tomorrow or the next day. [inessential.com]
10:24:47 PM
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Upstream this...
It appears that my MNJ newsfeed has been suffering today thanks to upstreaming problems with the Radio Userland software I use to author and maintain Mac Net Journal. I am working to resolve the problem and wanted to offer a quick word of thanks to those who are wondering why they aren't seeing MNJ's news showing up in NetNewsWire Lite and other news aggregators. Thanks!
9:28:48 PM
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NYTimes on birding: Get the book
Vital Gear for Birders: A Good Book. For modern birding, a rapidly growing pastime that now takes in tens of millions of people, a book is the single most important piece of gear. By James Gorman. [New York Times: Science]
This article is great news for Natalie and I as we work on writing Birding Washington. We don't plan to compete with David Sibley or even the other guide books about birding in Washington. We take a different approach, focusing on the places to go, the habitat you will find there, and when you should go to find interesting birds to go with the great scenery, geology, and history of the place.
6:25:01 PM
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Mail2iCal 1.0 moves mail to iCal for exporting
Mail2iCal 1.0. - Mail2iCal is an AppleScript that allows users to export new email messages from all accounts in Mail to calendars in iCal. They can then be exported to an iPod using iSync. [d/l] [AppleScript Info]
1:29:54 PM
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Key Xing 2.2.1 fixes bugs
Key Xing 2.2.1. - Key Xing is a Mac OS X program that allows you to launch programs, files, system actions, AppleScripts, and URLs from your keyboard. Changes in this version: Includes French translation. Fixed a problem where the "Launch at Login" checkbox couldn't be clicked. [AppleScript Info]
1:25:22 PM
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A Cocoa literature list
HyperJeff offers a useful resource for Cocoa programmers: Cocoa Literature List
11:13:10 AM
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Why hasn't Instant Outlining caught on?
One of the interesting and unique features in Radio 8 is the ability to share and have people subscribe to real-time Instant Outlines. Apparently the idea hasn't caught on though, because this page shows just four recently changed IO files in the Radio community...
9:57:39 AM
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How to redirect RSS feeds with Radio
Bootstrap: How to Redirect an RSS Feed. "You've just moved your weblog or news site, and the RSS feed has moved too. You want people who are subscribed to your RSS feed to automatically start reading the feed at its new location. This document explains how to do that." [Scripting News]
9:46:27 AM
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IDG threatens Apple over Macworld stance
IDG, the organizers of the Macworld expos, are now threatening to play hardball with Apple if it won't appear at Macworld Expo in Boston:
If Apple won't participate in the Boston Macworld show, maybe Greco won't let the company display its wares at Macworld in Tokyo or Paris, or at the San Francisco show in Apple's backyard.
9:32:39 AM
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PowerMail 4.0.1 reviewed, but Eudora wins
Kirk Hiner offers a review of PowerMail 4.0.1 on the AppleLinks site today.
I can attest to PowerMail's abilities, and I have written often about my preference of this program over other email applications. But that has changed. I am now using Eudora 5.2b13 for a number or reasons:
- Eudora is MUCH faster doing things like downloading and deleteing emails, which is important if you receive a ton of email. As an example, last night I returned home to more than 400 messages that needed to be downloaded from my mail server. It took Eudora a few seconds to grab those messages, and another second or so to filter them into their respective folders. I tried downloading the same messages into PowerMail 4.0.1 this morning and killed the process after 5 minutes had elapsed.
- Eudora stores its email in text files and not a proprietary database format.
- Eudora offers more keyboard access to my mail.
Yes, I have spent a lot of time railing against the old-school interface offered on the Mac version of Eudora, but when it comes down to it, speed and functionality win over a pretty face.
8:56:05 AM
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The convergence of Mac, Unix, and Linux
Glenn Fleishman: Convergence: Mac, Unix, Linux. I wrote my regular biweekly column yesterday for The Seattle Times about encountering the growing convergence of Mac OS X and Unix/Linux uses. At the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference back at the beginning of the month, it was pretty extraordinary to see Titanium after Titanium running mostly OS X, but quite a few with single or multiple boots into flavors of Linux and (mostly) BSD Unix. [GlennLog]
8:40:12 AM
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Recent notable software updates
As found on Macupdate:
- Adium X 1.6.2c - Changes to the svelte and free chat client for AOL's Instant Messenger network fixes a number of errors and resets the host to a different AIM server.
- Big Cat 1.0b2 - This new version of the freeware contextual menu tool offers the ability to run shell scripts as well as AppleScript scripts from the Scripts submenu.
- PHP iCalendar 0.7 - Freeware PHP-based iCal file parser, updated now to offer a year view of your calendars, four new themes, timezone support, and more.
- Archer Pro 1.1.3 - The $29.95 shareware version of Archer supports viewing video, still images, and listening to audio, and it can create slide shows that integrate each of these elements. There is also a less capable freeware version, Archer 2.3.
- DropJPEG 2.0 - Freeware that converts images to JPEG format.
- Sawmill X 6.4b5 - Demo of the commercial hierarchical Web server log analyzer.
- Magellan X 3.5 - Spam filtration is the main focus of this update to the multi-language email client. Magellan is $50 shareware.
- PHPosxom 0.5b - First release of a PHP interface to the Blosxom Weblog authoring system. Freeware.
- ZipIt 2.2.1b2 - Shareware that offers Zip compression and decompression under OS X.
- Tex-Edit Plus X 4.3.1b5 - Update for the popular text editor that adds a new Tex-Aid AppleScript Studio application to the Scripts menu, a slight tweak to the margins on the default screen, and a number of bug fixes. The program remains a $15 shareware app.
- Epson TWAIN 5.75t4 - Free Twain driver for many Epson scanners.
- Communigate Pro 4.0 - Update to the powerful commercial email server.
8:33:37 AM
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Back from another research weekend
Natalie and I drove to the far north in Washington state this weekend, covering 165 miles and camping Saturday night in the middle of the Okanogan National Forest at a primitive camp site next to the South fork of Salmon Creek. Amazing birds, including a Golden Eagle showing some interesting diving behavior while we watched through our binoculars in the interesting Sinlahekin Wildlife Area. In all, we have done research on 74 of the 100-plus sites that will be part of our upcoming book, Birding Washington.
Now, back to playing catchup on the Mac news...
7:58:34 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
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